A Veil Of Freedom
by theturtlemonster
Summary: Harry Potter believed an angel had come to him in his hour of despair. Lucius Malfoy believed he had just secured his place as the Dark Lord's right hand man. A chance encounter changes history forever, forging an unbreakable bond that will be tested to its limits by scheming Headmasters, resurrected Dark Lords and unforseen enemies. Slash, Dark Harry, Manipulative Dumbledore.
1. Chapter 1

**PROLOGUE**

The pale, slender hand stroked his cheek and tenderly turned Harry's head to look into his mercury eyes. His touch was gentle and soft – unlike the rough treatment Harry was used to – yet strong enough to hold his gaze in place. The grey, bottomless eyes studied his own, with an ease Harry knew he should be worried about, but the fact that the man before him knew and cared so much about him that he understood everything Harry was feeling with a single glance made him feel more loved, and at ease, than he ever remembered feeling.

Harry inhaled sharply as the angel before him raised his other hand to stroke his lips with the pad of his thumb, grey eyes burning with a mixture of desire and love. Eyes so close to his own, that blonde hair brushed his flushed face, and he could smell his angel's expensive cologne.

'Tell me again.' Lucius whispered, his breath fluttering against Harry's face, his head bent to bury his face in Harry's raven locks, and inhaling the sweet scent of the only person he loved more than himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Essentially, this is a love story I wrote about a year ago, and I'm having a bad case of writers block with another project I'm working on so I decided to focus on this. It will by no means be as lengthy, nor as complex as Shadowed Pain, however there are various plot lines entertwined within this story to ensure it isn't another cliché Harry/Lucius. It is slight angst, but at the same time humor is incorporated to balance it out. **

**Hope you like it, and please review! :) **

* * *

Harry frowned, unable to help but think of all the things that he had done that seemed impossible. Talking to snakes, dying his teacher's hair, vanishing from the playground, to reappear on the roof a split second later … All seemed too incredible to be explained as mere coincidences, too real to pass off as a child's overactive imagination. Yet, Uncle didn't believe in magic – and he punished Harry for ever showing the slightest inkling that Harry did. The spider ran across his little finger; tentative, and unused to the warm moving surface that seemed to share his Home with him. But after a little while when the raven-haired child did nothing to harm him, the spider stilled and began to sleep, accepting the little boy and his dark hair as one of his brothers, and therefore a protector who wouldn't allow anything to happen to him as he slept.

And Harry Potter smiled, though the nine year old found the movement odd as his lips stretched upwards. It was much harder to maintain than his usual frown, and it didn't take long before his mouth drooped back to its customary grimace.

It was a saddening thought to think that this spider was the only thing that the Boy Who Lived could remember that had accepted him, that wanted him. Vernon, Petunia, Dudley – it would make their life if he would just disappear.

Something Harry sometimes desperately wished he could do.

Harry flinched when a shower of wood flecks fell from the ceiling of his cupboard as Dudley purposely bounced up and down on the ancient wooden stairs, his eyes watering when he realised Dudley hoped that maybe one day the stairs really would fall through – hopefully killing Harry in the process.

Harry wished he had a normal family, someone who loved him, or at least cared for him. He knew that once he had parents, people who he hoped had cared for him, at least a little bit, even if Petunia said they had merely been drunks.

But he had no way of knowing if they had loved him, because all he remember from that precious year he spent with his family – his _real_ family – was a man's deep boisterous laughter, and a woman talking accompanied by a flash of red hair.

He didn't even know if the two people were really his parents.

Harry frowned as dust continued to fall, the stair's wobbling under his cousin's weight as Dudley continued to bounce up and down determinedly on the already weakened stairs.

Maybe, Harry thought grimly to himself as he stroked the spider sleeping on his little finger, everything would be easier if his cousin succeeded.

* * *

Harry couldn't breathe, his breaths were uneven and gasping, he had pains in his sides and his legs were exhausted from running.

He had thought the library was safe from his cousin's gang, but apparently not. Dudley had barged in, his gang of bullies right behind him, and immediately started throwing books at his gaunt, defenceless cousin. With the promise to pick their fight up where it left off as soon as the last bell went, and the threat to stay silent and clean up the library, the Boy Who Lived had swallowed tightly, grimacing as blood filled his mouth from his nose that Dudley had thrown a book at that Harry hadn't dodged in time.

Needless to say, his cousin and his gang were true to their word, and Harry was now sprinting – for what he was pretty sure was his life – away from them, and hopefully to safety. However, the woods he was now approaching did not look quite so friendly, and Harry wondered whether maybe facing Dudley and his friends would be the better option.

But with one look at his cousin's malicious face, filled with glee at the hunt, and the friends that followed his every word, Harry ran into the shelter of the forest – changing history forever.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy frowned, pale hands running through his pale blonde hair to smooth imagined knots. Brushing a small, completely unnoticeable fleck of dust from his impeccable, ironed black robes, Lucius surveyed the small forest he had just Apparated into.

He was not usually one for grunt work – not in the ministry, and certainly not in the somewhat shady organisation he was still involved in, despite the ministry having cleared his name. However, this was too important a task to delegate. He didn't trust any of the unimportant idiots not to outright try and murder the Boy Who Lived for a quick succession through the ranks, and recognition from the Dark Lord when He returned. Nor, did Lucius trust any of his 'colleagues' from the inner circle who would probably torture the first Muggle they came across, simply out of habit.

No, this task required discretion. Something which Death Eaters, despite being mostly made up of Slytherins, lacked in. Hence Lucius, standing in a position he had rather hoped to avoid. Getting his robes dirty – in a _Muggle_ forest. His lip curled upwards in disgust glancing warily at his surroundings as if worried their filth would infect him.

And then, a crunching sound and a twig snapping alerted him to the fact that he was not alone. Lucius frowned, having immediately cast Muggle Repelling charms when he arrived. What then? Had he stumbled upon – he shuddered – a _Mudblood_?

His wand, from where it had been hidden up his sleeve, fell into his fingers. Though Lucius smiled at the familiar feeling of warmth that spread through his fingertips, his eyes held a calculating gleam. He wondered whether the blood wards that protected Potter would be able to detect torture. Perhaps, if he kept to the more Grey curses …?

His thoughts broke off as more leaves crunches, and more twigs snapped. Clearly, whoever it was, was no expert in stealth. _Muggleborns_, Lucius scowled, no etiquette whatsoever. He could hear heavy breathing now, almost hysterical breathing in fact. He frowned; he didn't want his prey to die before he got a chance to play …

With that decision in mind, Lucius stepped forward towards where he had heard the crunching and the snapping and the panting. He tucked his wand back up his sleeve, knowing a Muggleborn would hardly be a challenge against the Dark Lord's right hand man. He was silent – a true predator – and he knew the Mudblood had no chance.

* * *

He knew, in that small rational part of his brain, that he was okay – that he was safe – because Dudley would _never_ try and go into the forest. For one thing, Petunia would kill him. For another, Harry knew for a fact that Dudley had stayed up late one night and watched a movie Vernon had forbidden him to watch about werewolves. From the screams that had come from the living room, and the dark circles under his cousin's eyes, Harry knew Dudley Dursley would not be venturing into the forest any time soon.

However, his fear of his cousin combined with his utter exhaustion and lack of food, not to mention the numerous paper and bruises he had received from Dudley and his gang in the library, over powered this small sense of rationality.

So, instead of simply catching his breath, waiting a few minutes, and heading home, Harry Potter was busy having a panic attack in the middle of a forest. As he waited for reason to kick in, he was unaware of a certain blonde Slytherin watching him with a predator's gleam barely disguised in narrowed grey eyes. A Slytherin who was so busy deciding what torture spells go unnoticed by the blood wards, than noticing the small – but significant – lightning bolt that marred the boy's pale forehead.

It took Harry a long time to sooth his mind that Dudley was not coming, and even longer to slow his breathing. So, it took a very long time before he took the time to glance around at his surroundings, and thus realised that he was not alone.

He couldn't help but flinch in surprise. That there had been someone there, this whole time – watching him … But at the same time, as he studied the man in front of him, Harry couldn't help but be filled with a sense of relief – it wasn't Dudley. Dudley hadn't found him, Dudley wasn't going to beat him up. And he couldn't help the smile that spread across his face, despite the fact that the gesture felt so strange he quickly dropped it.

Harry had never been allowed to go to mass – Petunia had never allowed him. She said it was because of his freakishness, and that he should thank her for not making him go with them because surely an abomination such as him would burn upon setting foot in the church. So he had never been, but in school they had studied religion. And in the textbooks, there had been pictures of angels. Staring at this man, at his white blonde hair, so perfectly straight, and his grey eyes, the colour of the clouds, made him wonder whether maybe God didn't hate him for his freakishness after all.

That maybe He had sent this Angel to save him.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy smiled. It was not something he did often, nor something he approved of, but this was too great. A child, a little boy of no more than seven or eight, stumbling upon him? And a Mudblood to boot. Yes, the occasion definitely merited a smile. If not for sheer coincidence, then definitely for the delightful flinch the child gave upon finding out he was not alone in the forest.

Lucius, a man who appreciated money, beauty and power, would admit that were he to leave the Mudblood alive, it would surely turn out to be quite beautiful – provided it ditched the glasses, of course. The perfect, albeit slightly feminine bone structure, the pale but beautiful skin, the rosy lips, the unique emerald eyes … All made for a boy Lucius was sure he would have appreciated. Or, at least, he would have – had the boy in question not have been a Mudblood, making the boy lesser than some half breed werewolf.

And yet, the boy was smiling at Lucius – the guy who was intending to kill him …

Maybe, Lucius decided, Mudbloods were just weird like that. He had never been able to understand them at Hogwarts, particularly in first year when they went on and on about how they missed their families and strange devices he believed to be called 'Telephones' that transmitted messages instantly, like Professor Slughorn had explained, a Patronus. The blonde had never understood how anyone who had had even the slightest glimpse of their world would miss another, clearly less amazing one. Clearly, Lucius' upper lip curled, their impure blood affected their judgement.

And then his attention was drawn back to the little boy in front of him, whose rose lips were puckered in a manner he knew from his own son – though he hated to compare his pureblooded heir to anything so disgusting as a Mudblood – meant the boy was going to speak.

'Are you an angel?'

A small, almost manical laugh burst from his chest.

He _loved_ Muggle torture.

* * *

'No,' his Angel smiled, 'I'm no angel.'

Harry frowned, staring at the man in front of him, whose beauty was so pure, and so ethereal that Harry knew he was no mere human.

'Then what are you?'

His angel smiled again, 'I'm a wizard.'

Harry's brow puckered, remembering his Uncle's insistent – and often violent – reminders that there was no such thing as magic. For as long as Harry could remember, magic, wizards, elves, or even something as simple as a flying motorcycle, were forbidden words in the Dursley household.

'Uncle says there's no such thing as magic.' Emerald eyes searched grey. 'That it's freakish to even think of it.'

For a moment, Harry wondered whether it wasn't just an Angel he had encountered, but a Fallen Angel. An evil angel, Mr Carson had explained. For the rage that burned inside his Angel's silver eyes at the mention of magic being freakish, was something he wouldn't even wish on Uncle Vernon. And the way his Angel's pale hands clenched tightly seemed too violent to even compare to him to an angel.

'And do you believe him?'

'I don't know.' Harry whispered, staring at the forest floor.

'And your uncle? Is he the one who gave you these?' A pale hand gestured at his nose which was still gushing blood, and the numerous cuts and bruises that covered his face and body.

Harry frowned. He wasn't allowed to tell anyone how he got his injuries. Instead, he was meant to tell everyone that he was just clumsy – really clumsy. He had learnt, over the years, that failure to comply with this rule, was even worse than saying a freakish word like magic. But this was his Angel, and it was a sin to lie to angels – wasn't it?

'Some of it.' Harry admitted sheepishly, knowing how weak he must appear. His eyes stared at anywhere but the silvers ones that searched him. 'The rest of it's from people at school.' He shrugged, 'They try to beat the freakishness from me.'

Refusing to look anywhere near the angel in front of him, The Boy Who Lived missed the flash of pain and understanding in the silver eyes that were staring so intently at him. And when green and silver met once more, any emotion that was once there was replaced by hardness.

'And you let them?'

Hard green eyes looked up, 'Would I be in this forest if I did?'

* * *

**Please review, contructive criticism appreciated!**


	3. AN

Hey, sorry about this AN - I know how much they suck but I figured I should update you on what's going on.

Like the idiot I am I spilt coffee all over Bettie - my laptop - and completely destroyed it. I didn't back any thing up because - like I said - I'm an idiot so I lost a lot of the work I'd done for this fic. I've got chunks of this story written out on file paper, so I might be able to type it up at school, but it will be Christmas before I can get a replacement laptop and start updating regularly again.

Again deepest apologies - i truly am really sorry about this! :(


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